View And Response: Kate O'Brien's Portrait Of Amanda Palmer

This portrait of Amanda Palmer by Kate O'Brien reminded me of a little Valentine's Day incident last year wherein I was lured into attending a "Happening" in Ft. Greene with the promise of exotic and swarthy companionship (shall we say).

The location: It was seemingly a squatted factory of the kind that was so popular Pre-9/11 with poor college students and reprobate young adults; red brick and crooked floors and exposed beams. Paintings were on the wall in a fresco style and they were poorly done, garish and ugly. There were several floors of the party and several rooms per floor and at least one corner of each floor had a makeshift bar with tiki lamps, christmas lights and cheap off-brand liquors and cans of watery, warm beer. Also on each floor was a stage whose boundaries were marked on the ground with reflective tape. Naturally, there was a band playing each stage in a different musical style. The crowd was young -- perhaps underage -- and enthusiastic in the way that young people are when they are allowed outside of the house and horny and drunk and drugged.

So the Girl I was with (who shall remain nameless) and I couldn't figure out what to do. Some of our more resilient traveling companions (the idiots that took us there) went off in search of booze or weed or both. Some of the others lingered against the furthest wall from the action in hopes that death would come swiftly and painlessly. The Girl and I looked at each other and slipped off past the throngs of sweaty, bepatchouli oiled college freshmen and we stumbled downstairs to dance. And we danced close... very, very close... to swingin' oldies and sweet soul music for what seemed like seconds but was more like hours and the room stopped spinning and our buzz wore off and we both realized that -- hey -- we were both huddled for comfort because we were fascinated by each other, true, but also because we were trying to protect each other from sweaty, bepatchouli oiled college freshmen. Time to go.

I grabbed her hand and we headed back upstairs from the room we had left hours before. As we fought up against the current of stumbling girls in awkward heels I heard the sound of a broken piano and a female voice singing in a strange affected English contralto.

"Fucking bitch thinks she's Amanda Palmer!" I turned and said to the Girl.

"What?!" She didn't hear me.

I turned back to find the exit. Of course it was Amanda Palmer playing a solo show on a broken piano on Classon Ave. with about sixty rapt post-teens sitting cross-legged on the floor like kindergarteners waiting for story time.

I turned and whispered in the girl's ear, "We need to go. Now."

Retroactive Post to June 24, 2007

Me: "Oh! We can stop at Randy's Donuts on the way to the airport!"

Dan: "Yes... we could do that."

In truth, I'd never been to Randy's, even when I was going to Kings games when they were still at The Forum (which is still, even in religious mothballs, better than the Staples Center). We arrived at Randy's with a good two hours to spare before it could be considered panic time at the airport, but we had to wait in line for a good fifteen minutes before our turn came. The line itself was always about ten people deep (there is one walk up window) and the drive-thru windows were easily backed up onto Manchester Blvd. They seemed understaffed for a Sunday morning, even though it was going on ten AM.


In true (bad) scientific form, I consumed one (1) plain cake donut as a control. The donut base is really pretty good -- better than you'd expect, if you're the type who figures they'd coast on reputation -- cakey not too sweet with a nice crisp exterior that holds up well to dunking, which is the only way to enjoy a fresh donut.

I then had a maple long john, which is a surprisingly obscure commodity here on the east coast and found it to my satisfaction -- the light sweetness of the cake portion didn't make the whole thing sickening or overwhelm the maple flavor which, while as inauthentic and synthetic as anything else, was passably "maple."

In conclusion, Dunkin' can take a leap. Horton's gets a pass for belonging to a culture. Krispy Kreme remains some other-type shit.

The whole detour to Randy's took a good half hour longer than we had figured and by the time we made it to the airport a pipe had burst in the first terminal, forcing passengers out into the street and causing massive congestion that seems to happen in L.A. no matter what. Still, we made it into the waiting area with ten minutes to spare and pacified our producer, M., who got a chocolate-cake donut with a sugary glaze. He declared it "good."

Where We're From, The Birds Sing A Pretty Song

Subtitled: Emo Bird Is Emo



Today, sharing images with you brings me no joy, and I think my dead-bird friend here kind of says it all.

I'm getting audited and as much as I'd like to play it off as another life experience, it's a very lonely feeling right now, especially since they're asking for info from 2005 which I don't really have in any sort of complete form, and there's a big chunk of change that they're curious about that I have no documentation on AT ALL. I certainly won't have it by Monday (which is Opening Day, the first day of Spring). The numbers that we're talking about in terms of money are sort of nebulous to me and I have no cotton-pickin' idea why they'd want to audit me to begin with, short of 2005 being the first year I actually rose above the poverty line.

I've been asked by my friends, who are fearful of the same thing happening to them, to take good notes ... So in short terms, let this be a lesson to you, kiddies: keep EVERYTHING. One of my head-slapping moments was realizing that I had shredded 2005's phone bills literally 12 hours before the audit summons arrived in the mail. That said, they say to keep this sort of shit for 7 years. There isn't that much space in my universe.

Obsession Leads to Compulsion

WHO



ARE



YOU?



Thoughts on marketing:

There's more of those on Flickr, of course. I had originally thought that the Flickr site would draw more hits to the Official Richard Gin Site and the Official Richard Gin Blog (I Fall To Pieces) and it has, to a point, but not in any sort of impressive way. I think it takes a certain kind of person/Flickrwonk to bother to check in the profile page to find the link here and I may have to re-think my posting strategy. In a way, I'm more interested to see who finds this site directly, rather than those who make the trip over from the Flickr halfway house.

All the same, I would like to extend a warm hello to visitors from the UAE and United Kingdom who have come here.